So while others celebrate a third-place division finish like it’s winning the lottery (hello, Texas A&M); while some talk about a tipped pass from winning it all (that’s you, Georgia); while they throw up garish signs to honor a team that won every game but did so under NCAA probation (see: Ohio State), Hoke and everyone at Michigan want to be perfectly clear about the last two years in Ann Arbor.

Abject failure.

“What have we done?” says Michigan offensive tackle Taylor Lewan. “All I have known at Michigan is failure.”

While coach after coach and player after player here at Big Ten Media Days preach a new season and a new life, Michigan can’t escape the reality of stepping through the doors to the football complex where Bo’s standard still hangs in wait:

Those who stay will be champions.

You don’t really think they’re talking about some meaningless bowl win and how it has turned around a program, do you? Leave that to Texas.

Or how no one had more quality wins last year, and that implosion in the bowl game was an anomaly. Keep chirping, Florida.

Or how scholarship limitations are the reason national championship goals deteriorated into a six-loss season. Nice, USC.

They’re all excuses; they’re all an easy way out to rationalize the hardest job of all: perfection.

“If you’re a competitor, how could you say anything different?” said Michigan quarterback Devin Gardner. “You can’t avoid the obvious.”

Wouldn’t you know it, that’s where the story begins this fall at Michigan, a team that for the last two years avoided the obvious: you can’t win big games consistently if you can’t throw the ball.

The entire concept of your passing game can’t be jumpballs, or scramble and make a play. As exciting and dynamic as Denard Robinson was at Michigan, he was probably the worst thing that could have happened to the growth of the program.

While Hoke will never admit it—“I’d be an idiot if I didn’t play a guy with Denard’s ability,” he says—playing Robinson prevented Michigan from growing offensively and kept the unit predictable. It worked in Year 1 because Robinson hit his peak as a junior, and because a stout Michigan defense eliminated mistakes made by the offense.

It failed in Year 2 because the rest of the Big Ten figured out how to slow down Robinson, then zeroed in on his one flaw: throwing the ball. By the time Robinson was injured in late October, it was obvious something had to change.

That Gardner was there to pick up the pieces was pure luck. He had moved to wide receiver to begin the season, and freshman Russ Bellomy was Robinson’s backup. That is, until Bellomy was injured, too, and Gardner—who hadn’t been to quarterback meetings all season—was thrust into the No. 1 spot.

Suddenly the player former Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez wanted to build his team around; the player Rodriguez compared to Pat White, his All-American quarterback from his days at West Virginia, had one more shot at it.

“Denard looked at me and said, this is your chance,” Gardner said. “Play well here, and you won’t be sharing snaps in spring practice.”

Here’s all you need to know about Gardner’s impact on the offense: Robinson and Bellomy combined for nine touchdowns, 13 interceptions and zero creativity in the passing game. Gardner threw 11 touchdowns against five interceptions and completed 60 percent of his passes—despite not playing (or thinking) quarterback all season.

Everything opened up: intermediate routes, deep balls with accuracy (not jumpball prayers) and timing throws. His yards per attempt—a key indicator to the strength of a passing game—was two yards more than that of Robinson and Bellomy. Two yards in that metric may as well be two miles.

“We completely changed what we could do in a matter of a game,” Lewan said.

That’s why Michigan got better—why the Wolverines won three straight with Gardner under center, and should have won five straight. This team had Ohio State beaten in Columbus and blew it; had South Carolina beaten in the Outback Bowl and blew it.

Win those two games to finish the season, and it’s a completely different narrative about Michigan going into Year 3 under Hoke. Instead, the offseason has been boiled down to a ridiculous five-second television money shot.

That’s Michigan, on the short end of a vicious hit from stud defender Jadeveon Clowney.

“That’s blown out of proportion,” Gardner said. “If a guy’s not blocked, he should make that play.”

How fitting. That Clowney hit—and the media frenzy it caused—ties together Michigan under Hoke the last two seasons. Just because you’ve made the nightly highlights (see: Robinson’s dynamic runs) doesn’t mean you’ve made it.

Or in this case, doesn’t mean you’re not a failure.

At one point Wednesday, after Hoke tried desperately to explain what failure means at Michigan, I asked what if you win the Big Ten?